When Life Gives You Lemons

We arrived home today to find a broken window in our basement, courtesy of one of our horned goats.

 My guess is Gerda. The other day, she ripped one of the window screens with her horn. 

Thankfully this window is double paned, so only the outside pane broke (its integrity had been compromised already; some time ago, a lawnmower kicked up a rock that cracked it). 

As you can see from the above picture, the goats had also stripped the bark from one of the backyard trees we had planted in the past year. It's toast. No recovery from damage like that. G bent the tree so the goats could eat the leaves before the tree dies. 

Mulberries and Elderflowers

My parents' elderberry patch is in blossom. There are a bunch of smaller areas around some grain bins, but this is the main area.

I picked a few clusters to dry for tea, flavor kombucha, and turn into elderflower sugar. 

Mulberries are also in season. They are so delicate they can fall off if you brush a branch the right way. 

I filled a mason jar with the ripe berries I could reach from the ground. I tried a handful and was surprised they weren't more favorable. Maybe from all the rain? I'll dry these ones in an attempt to condense their flavor.

 

Lilac Kombucha

The scoby grew really well in only a few days! 

And it stuck all the flowers together for easy removal.

The kombucha has a slightly floral flavor that's quite nice! I stuck the scoby out on the back deck to see if the goats would eat it. None of them were around, so I left it there. When I came back a few hours later, it was gone. Deduction? They ate it. Probably Ilsa if I had to guess.

Next floral kombucha to try is elderflower!

 

Weeding With Raz

G had the idea Raz should hang out with me as I weeded the garden this afternoon. It was surprisingly fun. 

She'd hide in the plants, stalk me, and jump on my shoes. She also jumped on my back and crawled up on my shoulders as I crawled between rows. 

I also figured out that this plant is a wild radish according to an online app. It's probably a regular radish seeding out (one of the ones we planted in the fall). 

We have a major earwig problem in our garden, particularly the lettuce. It's disgusting. I need to do some research. 

Flooding

I wish I could post videos on this blogging platform, but alas I cannot. 

Unless you've been living under a rock in the Mankato area these past few days, you will have heard about the Rapidan Dam in imminent danger of failing from all the rain this area has had this week. So far it's holding steady and my guess is it will continue to hold. 

I was glued to the news all day. Not much new information came out over the course of the day. Basically, emergency responders notified everyone in the flood zone (if the dam would break) and they evacuated. If the dam breaks, it would only raise the river level by 2 ft (from 28ft up to 30ft), which is still much lower than the flood walls in Mankato (rated to 39ft). Problems would occur if debris breaks those walls, but they're built very sturdily so city officials are not anticipating that.

Another sort of positive thing is that water found a way around the dam. Good news: it releases pressure from behind the dam making it less likely for the dam to fail. Bad news: it really erodes the riverbank and has washed away a power station, a shed, trees, and has left a house semi-hanging off the edge.

The dam is about a 20min drive from our house, so after supper last night, G and I (and his parents) took a drive to see the dam for ourselves. At that point it sounded like the dam would hold, there probably wouldn't be as many people out there gawking, and we wouldn't be too much in the way.

The sheriff had blocked off the road a ways away and set up cones to make a pedestrian walkway down to the viewing point. We passed a lot of people leaving and saw a few people coming after us. 

We arrived just after sunset.

Wow. The power of the water. 

G said earlier in the day he had heard someone liken it to Niagara Falls and scoffed. How could anything in Minnesota even come close to that? But seeing it in person... Yep. I can see the resemblance. 

I could tell right away that the water level was lower than what it had been earlier in the day. About 2ft by my estimation. The pile of debris was bigger. Water still gushed around the side of the dam and through it the normal way (not as much as usual because of the debris). 

The majestic, giant tree was still hanging on. Yesterday morning everyone thought it would fall in. Cameramen zoomed in on it often expecting it to pull loose from the dirt. Nope. Not today.

The house that's hanging out over the edge was also still hanging in there. The owners of the Dam Store live there. I wonder how much notice they had to get their stuff out. How awful. Hopefully no more erosion will happen now that the river has cut its path. Maybe they can pick up the house and relocate it farther back.

Lots of local roads are closed due to flooding. G had to take a new way to get to work today. Normally it's a 20min drive. Today it was 40. The street outside the garden center was closed down due to flooding. No customers today! He took the opportunity to get some projects done. 

Major rivers are due to crest overnight/early morning they say. Our next round of rain is expected on Thursday. 

The deer have been merciless this week. Their normal grazing area is flooded so they come up to our place to eat. Last night they ate our planters that are right up next to the house! They must be desperate. Man, we gotta get that deer fence sprayed!

Ready, Set, Bake!

I never intend to bake the whole day, but some days are like that...

It started when I cleaned out the upstairs freezer to make Crock-Pot soup and found a package of flour I had forgotten about. The idea continued when I realized we didn't have any bread in the house and that my sourdough starter needed refreshing. 

Cue up the computer to find a recipe! I came across a site that listed one called "the easiest sourdough discard bread recipe you'll ever make". It used a Dutch oven for baking, which I have and don't use very often. 

I actually have two starters, so I needed to find another recipe. That website had links for hot dog and hamburger bun sourdough discard recipes (always good to have on hand in the summer). There was also a recipe for sandwich bread made from sourdough discard. Amazingly, I could make all four recipes with the amount of discard I had. So I did. 

The multiple recipe baking day worked better than I expected. I finished mixing up one recipe and started the next while it rose. By the time I finished mixing up the last recipe, the first recipe was ready to shape for its second rise. The timing just kept working out! After the second rise it was time to put it in the oven, and they all baked one after another. 

Even better, the oven temperature started out high with my first recipe and then got lower with subsequent recipes. Inadvertently, I had made them in order of decreasing oven temperature for baking. 😳

The recipes gave an average rise time, and one of their comments was that it would take longer if your house is cold or air conditioned. It's pretty hot and steamy today so the air conditioner is actually running. Buuuut... outside is the perfect temperature to proof bread. I labeled each bowl with the recipe name and left them outside for about an hour each.

After shaping, I covered them with a towel and set them back out there. It's so humid they didn't dry out. 

Before baking: the hamburger buns and sandwich loaf went in at the same time.

"The easiest sourdough discard recipe you'll ever use." It looks small because I made a double recipe and didn't weigh the dough when I cut it in half. 

Hotdog buns! 

Finished sandwich loaf, hamburger buns, the first sourdough loaf, and the hotdog buns.

Battle With the Deer and Rain

The deer won another round. Overnight, they munched on whatever we didn't have fenced (the hostas and sumac) and even the fruit trees with fences. 

They got our apricot again, which had regrown a bunch of leaves and was looking good after their last attack.

They pushed through the fence around our honeycrisp tree to enjoy those leaves. The deer net completely ripped away from the post. 

Some of the fences must have been too short or not far enough away because it looks like they just reached over the net. Ugh! Is it time to fence our whole property yet???

We have some liquid fence in our garage I've been procrastinating messing with. After seeing the casualties of this last round, I decided the time had come. I read the instructions, found our sprayer, and... there was some kind of liquid still in it. 

Hmm... We don't spray our lawn with chemicals (or anything really 😅), but this sprayer was left by G's parents, so it's possible the liquid is herbicide. Better not chance it. 

I called G to see if he remembered what was inside. He didn't. He also said I should just wait to spray the deer fence because there is another round of rain coming. 

As our rain gauge shows, we got 4.5 inches Thursday into Friday. 

Our pasture is maxed out on absorbing water; there are a few puddles here and there and the ground mushes where you walk. City streets are flooding and the city is shutting them down. Thankfully, we're not in a low area, so aside from construction, the roads by us are not affected. But my sister almost got flooded in at work Friday!

Yesterday's other band of storms brought 3 more inches of rain. 😬

Raz

I know I said a dog would be our next addition to the homestead, but a friend of ours from church found a kitten abandoned in some raspberry bushes, so here we are. Her name is Raspberry, Raz for short.

Mopsy was pretty skeptical of this new arrival. 

She and the goats came closer for a better look.

Lots of hissing from Mopsy before she retreated to her sanctuary on the hay bale. She couldn't look away...

We'll see how they adjust! The goats don't mind Raz at all, and will even stay lying down when she climbs over them.

Massive

Our ducklings are humongous. They've grown so much the past five days. They're in what I fondly call "the dinosaur stage". Still have fluffy down, but it's getting skraggly, their feet and bodies are huge, and their heads have not kept up proportionally. They toddle around like dinosaurs roaming the lawn. 

It's been rainy and the ducks have mushed the grass to mud. G and I moved the trampoline across the driveway. I picked a spot I want to turn into a hosta bed so if they completely demolish the grass, it's actually helpful.

This grass was quite long and seeding out, and the poultry went hog wild pecking at the seeds. They weren't ravenous when we fed them their daily chick starter.

Here they are, content in their new location.

 

Lilac Sugar

I kind of forgot about the lilac sugar... It was ready at least two weeks ago. It's just sugar and lilac blossoms, so I figured nothing would go bad.

It definitely smells like lilacs! It's very clumpy though. I did a quick Google search to troubleshoot.

Unfortunately, it appears the recipe I originally used didn't give complete instructions. I was supposed to shake the jar every day or two, and as the flowers shriveled and turned brown, I was supposed to take them out.

Since I did not, the juice from the petals seeped into the sugar and stuck the grains together. 

Answer: use a spoon and a sieve to separate the flower petals from the sugar and to break up the chunks. It took way longer than I expected. But the end results are satisfactory! 

It seemed too wasteful to toss the petals with sugar residue in the trash, so instead I did a secondary fermentation in a batch of plain kombucha. Plop the flowers in and wait! I'll test the flavor in a few days. 

Finished Fencing

It's been on my list to redo the deer fencing around our orchard. The deer haven't been coming through at night (or we haven't noticed them), so that task hasn't been pressing. But the tall grass got to me, so I redid them. Now each tree/shrub has its own fence. 

The strawberries are to the left of the white fence in the right of the picture. Right now they are not enclosed... They're not very visible, so I think the deer won't pay attention to them.

G hung up the fencing in the gap in the north pasture. It's not completely attached, but it's tight enough for the goats to graze there without us worrying about them getting out.

Since the grass/alfalfa is so luscious, we need to slowly acclimate the goats to their new environment or they could bloat. They got to graze for a half an hour the first night and a few hours the next day. We'll build them up until their guts adjust. How many goats can you see in the picture? 

The ducks are growing a ton. G's cousin came over to give them a treat: frozen peas in water. In addition to being tasty, the water/pea combo teaches them to dive. 

 

Night Gardeners Strike Again!

Since the goats have eaten all the lower leaves on our lilacs, G wanted another row of bushes to block the wind in that area. He brought home a bunch of native dogwood shrubs. Don't those look tasty? The goats thought so! 

G put up a temporary fence around the area and dug all the holes first. 

Then, we brought the shrubs in to plant. Our plan was to set them all in the holes and then shovel them in. Not a great idea. 

That many fresh leaves were too alluring for the goats. They walked right through the white temporary fence (not electrified) and helped themselves. Of course, the openings are large enough for them to get their horns tangled in, so they did that too. 

By that time it was dark, but we couldn't leave the job half done. G's camping headlights have certainly come in handy! New plan: lock the goats in the shed while we plant and put up a better fence to protect the windbreaks. 

My dad had brought us a fresh supply of our sturdy wire goat fence. The only size TSC had was the 320ft roll, and we only need 120ft to finish the pasture fence, so we had plenty of sturdy fencing to put around the windbreak. Not many posts left though. We had two to work with.

Thankfully the trees are conveniently located. We used mostly trees as posts to keep the fencing upright. Lights from the house lit our work area... until the timer shut off. The cue for bedtime! 

One good thing about working late is that the mosquitoes have gone to bed too! There is a distinct point in the evening when they all disappear! 

Here is the final product: 

Svetlana

 

We're up to four goats on our homestead... and have only had to pay for two! 

A friend of G sent him a Facebook post from someone she knew who was downsizing their hobby farm. All the animals listed were free: a rabbit, two whethered goats, two female goats, three turkeys, four ducks, and a bunch of kittens. 

We got the turkeys and ducks for my dad and got one goat for us. Svetlana is an Alpine (known for milk production) crossed with a Nigerian Dwarf. 

You can definitely see both breeds in her appearance! The other goats accepted her right away. She is a little skittish and settling in to our homestead is taking a bit. She loves to jump and be on top of things... Last night she discovered the blue dog house as a perch, and now we often hear clattering as she jumps up to survey the pasture.

She is also less picky than the other goats. We have a few bushes in a windbreak we planted earlier this year. The other goats pretty much leave it alone. Every once in a while, they eat a leaf or two to remind themselves they don't like that plant and then move on. Svetlana will eat a whole mouthful!

I tried putting chicken wire fencing around wood posts to keep them out, but they broke the post. Guess that's what happens when you use pine. Stay tuned for our solution to that problem!

Here you can see our three ladies: Ilsa in the back, Gerda on the left, and Svetlana on the right.

Chicken Trampoline

No, no. We're not letting our birds bounce in the backyard, although I did think about putting the trampoline in the backyard for the goats...

It's a chicken coop made from a trampoline! I saw it on pinterest and a friend had an old trampoline, so I thought, why not? 

G's middle brother happened to be in town one day, so he helped me get started. We set up the frame (harder than it looked) and hooked on the tarp. Then we wrapped chicken wire around the outside, tying it to the legs. The wire wasn't tall enough to go up to the tarp, so we did a second layer that folds down over the springs to really make it secure. 

The bugs were awful and our time was short, so it didn't get all the way secured. I had left space for a door to make it easy for us to get in and out. That will take a little more building. Yesterday, G wanted the girls to enjoy the nice weather, so he brought them out and blockaded the door. It worked great! 

We still need to add a rain and wind shelter (and a roost), but worked okay for day trips. Since there isn't much weather protection, when the skies grew cloudy I brought them back to the garage. I thought it would be hard to catch them, but the girls came right over to me when I walked up and only put up a mild fuss when I grabbed them. Success!

This past Sunday, we finished it by adding a gate to enter and putting in some items to let the chicks and ducks take shelter from wind/rain.

Tires for them to hide in, although they haven't discovered those yet.

The white box to the right in the pictures is open on one side, meant to be a wind/rain block. The chicks love to hang out in there. Or on top. The chicks are getting so big! They have their full-grown feathers now!

The ducks tend to congregate and follow each other around. This bottom picture is us releasing them into their new home. 

They're getting big too, almost the same size as the chicks! But they still have their down feathers for the time being.

Treats on a Hot Day

You can see how much our goats like to climb. I often see them like this when I pop out to check on them. One of our summer plans is to redo the shed, so it won't be like this for long. I'll have to come up with some sort of climbing hill outside this summer to take the place of the wood pile and shelf.

Our garage got stinky from the ducks being ducks, so I relocated them to the goat shed. Once again, that dog kennel comes in handy! They are enjoying their new space so far. The goats tolerate them and I haven't noticed Mopsy checking them out. Maybe they'd be safe to free range, but I'm worried about the goats stepping on them or them squeezing through the fencing. We'll wait until they're a little bigger. The logs around the bottom are to keep the ducks from squeezing out. The gray tub on top is to keep the goats from jumping up. I don't think they would, but you never know, and we've learned 'better safe than sorry' is an accurate statement! 

It was quite hot for a day this week. A friend of mine cleaned out her freezer and had some ice encrusted zucchini to share. The chicks enjoyed pecking at it. 

Although these pictures don't show it well, the goats gobbled it up too. Ilsa took great, gigantic chomps. My former students always talked about Joe the tortoise having great ASMR... well he's got nothing on these goats! Whew! Loud chompers!

 Today I gave them watermelon chunks as a treat. The goats of course scarfed it up. The chicks went straight for the seeds. The ducks pecked a while before they figured it out. You can see the craters from their beaks in the picture below.

The Surprise: Results

Well, we pulled off the surprise! 

G got home around 10pm and it was indeed too dark for him to see much outside. He did notice the dirty/wet fence post pounder in the garage. 

That was one of the first things he asked about when he got inside. "What were you pounding? Where did you put a post in? How many did you do?" I answered cagily and tried to change the subject so I wouldn't have to lie. 

He brought it up a few more times, but each time I evaded answering. The secret was safe until morning!

As I suspected, the first thing he did after getting up was to look out the window. 

"Emily, what did you do?" 
"What are you talking about?" (I was in the kitchen getting breakfast ready).
"You know what I'm talking about!"
"No, I don't. What do you mean?"
"Yes you do! ...Who helped you? Was it Grant?"

Again, I didn't answer. He continued to guess:
"Your dad? No, not your dad. Hmm... Did you hire it done? Is that why we don't have any money???" (He was joking; we're doing completely fine financially 😂).

He walked over to the sliding door that looks out towards my in-law's house. "AHA! I see Grant rocking in a chair in the living room! I knew you had help!" 

G was impressed by all that we finished. He has a few tweaks he wants to do, but overall he gave it the thumbs up. One big bummer is that TSC continues to be out of our fencing and will be out for another few weeks. Thankfully, the Worthington TSC had some in stock. My dad picked some up for us and will bring it this weekend. Hopefully the north pasture can be finished next week! 

Fencing Frenzy

G is away for a few days, camping with his high school friends in North Carolina. While the cat is away, the mouse will play! 

Or rather, work. 😅 

I decided to surprise him with a bunch of projects done when he gets home... I enlisted the help of his brother up in Duluth. He came down for a few days to put up pasture fence with me. 

Even though it has rained on and off, we've accomplished a lot! All the wooden posts are sunk and cemented in. Gates are hung. Steel posts in line. Would you believe we only had two fence posts leftover? G is really good at estimating.

We used a hose to make sure our line was straight. I'd stand back behind a couple of installed posts to triple check they were in line. We used a level as we pounded them in to make sure they were level sideways and frontwards. This has got to be the straightest fence in Blue Earth County! 

Unfortunately, we weren't able to finish the back pasture. We ran out of fence and TSC is out of stock too. They might get more on Monday. 

The finished part of our back pasture fence...

I thought about posting this earlier in the week. Odds are pretty low that G would read this before he gets home... Buuuuut, better safe than sorry! He's on a plane heading back to MN right now...